


I'll keep turning down the hands that beckon me to come

by nonagesimus



Category: Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
Genre: I don't know how to tag still, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, they are in love and you can pry them from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonagesimus/pseuds/nonagesimus
Summary: “Jealous?” Sinbad says, voice easily and casually mocking, but there’s something else under there, an undertone that speaks of so many things Marina isn’t even close to understanding.“Extremely,” says Proteus, cracking a half-smile, but Marina feels like he’s not joking.They stare at each other for a few moments. Marina’s gaze flickers between them. Sun and moon. She wishes—she doesn’t know what she wishes. Her heart is twisting again, but in a different way from before: as though it’s half-empty and longs to be full.
Relationships: Marina/Proteus (Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas), Marina/Proteus/Sinbad (Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas), Marina/Sinbad (Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas), Proteus/Sinbad (Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 176





	I'll keep turning down the hands that beckon me to come

It isn’t easy, leaving Syracuse behind. It’s an even greater challenge tearing herself away from Thrace. Not all because she’ll miss the place—though she will, with its great cool marble halls half-open to the tropical sun and warm wind, with its white pillars and familiar calm marketplaces and familiar calm people, with its towns stacked high and proud on cliffs overlooking the sea. More, though, the separation hurts because her father wants to skin her alive for it.

She stands in his house, wall beside them open and overlooking the ocean far below, and tries badly to explain her decisions.

“You have everything,” he says in helpless fury. “Everything at your feet. A palace, a prince—”

“Who doesn’t want me,” Marina lies. “And I don’t want him either,” she adds defiantly, truer now. “We mutually decided—”

“And what do you want? A stinking pirate’s vessel overflowing with rotting fish and perverted men? When you could have everything here on land?”

“Perverted? _Please_ ,” she retorts defensively. “Listen to yourself. You’re—”

“Listen to _yourself_! Destroying the marriage that was so carefully arranged for you! Abandoning everything for this—this—” As though overcome by anger or shame or both, her father buries his face in his hands and speaks muffled through his thin fingers. “I don’t understand, Marina. Help me understand. Help me know why this life you’ve chosen has more worth than the life of a princess you’ve left behind.”

She feels this plea is earnest, and despite her own indignation, she reaches out to him, puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “Because it’s what I want,” she says gently, stupidly, knowing this explanation will never be enough for him or anyone. “Because it’s what I’ve always wanted. I—I went out there and I tasted it,” she tries to explain, tries to put words to the depths of her heart, “and now that I’ve tasted it I can’t go back, I just can’t. Standing on the prow of the ship—the waves cresting under us—” She can’t help withdrawing into herself at the memory, clenching her fists to her chest and staring up at the ceiling as if she can teleport herself back to that moment by sheer force of will. “Being on an adventure. On the ocean. The urgency, the thrill, the unpredictability—”

“You’ll never make a difference there the way you could make in Syracuse,” says her father heavily, lifting his head to stare steadily at her with eyes so much like her own. 

Marina’s breath painfully catches on her chest as if snared on a hook. “I know,” she admits.

He stares at her for one more moment. “And the man you’re with,” he says. “The pirate.”

Marina says nothing.

“Surely he must be Prince Proteus’s equal or better. If you’re willing to abandon your fiancé for his sake.”

 _Equal or better._ Marina, very briefly, thinks on this; the results only frustrate and confuse her, so she pushes them away, petulantly. 

“I’m not abandoning Proteus,” Marina says calmly, restraining the resentment that’s been building up in her chest so crushingly, and the guilt too. “He told me I should go. We agreed on it together.”

“And you think he meant it? The prince is a good-hearted man. He let you go like a soft-hearted zookeeper might let a squawking bird out of its cage. Heedless of what dangers lay outside.”

“I’m not a bird,” she snaps.

“I know you’re not. A bird would put more thought into its decisions.”

“I won’t just stand here and let you—”

“You are the ambassador!” her father cries in a sudden sunburst of anger. “Your choices weigh on Thrace, not just on you and Proteus and your pirate lover! This is a matter of cities and nations, not just your private whims!”

“And what good would I be doing Thrace?” she fires back tightly. “A resentful diplomat kept against her will? Syracuse and Thrace and—and _Proteus_ deserve a princess and an ambassador who can give her everything. And I can’t. Father, I can’t. My heart isn’t there, and it’s not going to be there ever again.”

 _Marina, follow your heart. Mine is here in Syracuse. Yours is sailing with the next tide._ She hears her friend’s words echoing in her mind, and she wants to speak them out loud, because surely Proteus’s own words would be more impactful than Marina’s. He’s always been that way, able to calmly convince anyone of anything. She loves him fiercely and she’ll love him until the world freezes over, but she’s not in love with him, and her heart doesn’t beat for the city he rules, like it should.

“I don’t know how to convince you,” her father says, still pulsing with anger. “Which is a problem, because you need to be convinced.”

“And I don’t know how to convince _you_ to respect my decision,” she says firmly, keeping herself under control.

When her father doesn’t respond—only stares at her a moment more, in dark disappointment—Marina continues. “Anyway, it’s done. All right? It’s done. There’s no going back. Proteus is probably already courting another woman as we speak." (Why does saying these words cause a quick jab of pain in her chest?) "And Thrace is going to have to find another ambassador. It is _done_.”

Her father must hear the plea buried in her words: _it’s done so let’s not fight over spilled milk, please,_ please _let’s not fight_. He chooses purposefully to ignore them.

“If you want forgiveness,” he says, “you’ll need to search somewhere else. Today my only daughter looked me in the eye and told me she’s abandoning her fiancé and her country to go sailing with a pirate. I can’t forgive. I can barely look at you.”

Something twists and settles in her, a heavy weight. “I’m sorry,” she says awkwardly for the first time, the words sounding strange and wrong tumbling out of her mouth, because she doesn’t mean them, and yet at the same time she does, with all her heart.

It’s not as though Marina doesn’t care about Proteus, and Syracuse. She does, desperately. She stowed away on a rickety boat captained by a pirate and headed for the edge of the world simply because of her unyielding loyalty to that city-state and the prince who’ll one day inherit it. There was a time, not that long ago, she would’ve given her life for them. In fact, she expected she’d have to, and she welcomed it with open arms.

Later she finds that her father isn’t the only one who’s disappointed in her. Marina can’t bear the look in her mother’s laugh-lined eyes, that hurt and confusion: her mother doesn’t argue nearly as much as her father did, but somehow this is far, far worse.

“If you do this,” her mother says, “you’re an orphan.”

Marina says nothing to this, only tries to swallow the lump in her throat. How can she say anything: what is there to say?

And then there’s her fellow diplomats, and the high council of Thrace, and Marina is put before them and made to explain her decision. She does, calmly and with a steady voice and unshaking hands, although inside she feels like throwing up. Her unapologetic facade is too convincing: she’s told many things, among them that her choice will damn relations between Syracuse and Thrace forever, and called many things, from wicked to disloyal to a devious harpy with no heart in her chest. Standing there in the middle of the semicircle of councillors in that imposing high-ceilinged room, Marina feels trapped in a way she’s never felt here before. This used to be home; she used to sit in on council meetings as a teenager and long to be sat among those powerful men and women one day. Now she feels like a target.

After some time of flying accusations, Marina doesn’t even bother to defend herself anymore. She simply clenches her jaw and waits it out.

One of the councillors, a white-bearded old man, says, “We’ll recover from this. But Ambassador, I _am_ disappointed.”

Marina says quietly, “I understand.”

“You were a shining star. We all had great hopes for you. Under you, Thrace and Syracuse were prospering together. We could even have been united. Now…”

“I am truly sorry,” she says remarkably evenly, “for any harm this causes Thrace. And Syracuse. It’s not my intention to hurt the places I love the most in the world.”

“But,” says a councilwoman with raised eyebrow.

“But,” Marina admits heavily. “There’s someone and something I love more.”

Councillors begin talking over each other now.

“A pirate.”

“Yes, a ruffian and his ship, for the gods’ sakes!”

“Ambassador, are you with child? Speak honestly—”

“The ocean has no nations; _we_ need you _now_ _!_ ”

“It’s my choice,” she speaks over all of them, clearly and loudly. “The last time I checked, ambassadors weren’t puppets. It’s regretful that my decision is hurtful to you, but I’ve made that decision for myself.” This is the diplomat in her coming through: if she was speaking honestly, she’d happily tell the whole council to fuck off to hell, but something in her won’t allow her to set fire to these bridges just yet.

“I don’t think you understand what a disgrace this is,” says a councilman closer to her own age. “To your father, to your country, to yourself. You should be begging for our forgiveness. You should be begging the _prince's_ forgiveness.”

Something breaks. Those bridges are doomed. “Yeah, well, I didn’t sail over the ocean eating only rotten pickles and eggs three meals a day and battle sirens and captain ships and get abducted by a giant fucking bird and thrown all over creation and fly over the edge of the planet and infiltrate Tartarus and face down a goddess just so I could crawl back here and beg you people’s forgiveness because I apparently owe you an apology for _helping save the fucking world_ ,” she snarls with one breath, her voice tight and controlled and yet dripping with exasperation and fury.

Breathing hard and with arms crossed hard, she surveys the shocked and disappointed faces of the councilmen she once considered respected friends and colleagues. Sometime very soon she’ll regret this and regret it hard, but right now she feels as though a thousand-pound weight has left her shoulders.

“So. Are we done here?” she asks through gritted teeth.

“Yes,” says the white-bearded councilman. “We’re done.” And so ends her old life.

* * *

Sinbad has been waiting for her on the coast; he sailed her here from Syracuse—her own private chauffeur, she’d joked, to the reward of a filthy look from Sinbad and a long-winded explanation of why he’s _not_ a chauffeur, actually, and don’t ever call him that again. For someone so devil-may-care, it sure is easy to get a rise out of him. Marina’s learned that quickly; it’s one of her favourite things about him. 

After a long walk to the port, Marina steps from the dock onto the _Chimera_ , and right away feels like she’s home: that feeling reminding her immediately why she gave everything up for this. She takes a moment to appreciate the sensations: creaking wood under her feet, salty sea breeze caressing her face and mussing her hair, the friendly voices of men she considers her friends calling out to her cheerfully. Most of all, underneath all, the boat rocking gently on the water under her: a promise of infinite journeys not yet taken.

She lets her eyes open and smiles. Here it is: everything, the whole world an oyster wide open in front of her.

Waving to Luca and Rat and all the others who’re busily bustling around, she heads straight to Kale. The tall broad-shouldered pirate is leaning back against the railing, hands braced on the wood, head turned to the side so he can stare contentedly out over the beckoning ocean. She senses a kindred spirit in him, always has, even though she doesn’t know his story. She can tell he loves the ocean like she does, that it calls him like a mother, like it does her.

“Sinbad around? Or did he head into town?” she asks, voice laced through with fondness for both Sinbad and the man she’s addressing.

Kale turns toward her and smiles, but something’s troubled there. “He’s in the cabin. But Marina—”

She hears familiar voices before Kale can finish and turns, drawn like a moth to the moon.

Ascending the stairs from the cabin: Sinbad and Proteus. They’re close, Proteus smiling and Sinbad laughing, in the middle of finishing some humorous discussion. Both of them smile and laugh brighter than the stars, and the way they look at each other—they way they don’t look away, even as they’re coming up the stairs—the way they angle toward each other—something about it makes Marina’s heart catch in her throat. Not bad. Just different. Just new. Just—oh.

She knows Proteus loves Sinbad, and she knows Sinbad loves Proteus. The former because Proteus would never stop talking about his childhood friend, not in all the time Marina has known him; every five minutes he’d be recounting a story about Sinbad’s teen antics, the trouble they’d get into together as boys, and nothing else ever made the prince’s face light up quite so brightly. The latter because just a few days ago, despite all Sinbad’s prior posturing about running away to Fiji, and despite all the times Sinbad had pretended not to care, Marina had watched Sinbad quietly lay his head down on an executioner’s block and submit to death, because if he did it, Proteus wouldn’t have to.

The prince and the pirate, the sun and the moon. Marina distantly wonders if one can ever be more beautiful than the other, or if they are counterparts who shouldn’t ever be separated.

They notice her when they get to the top of the stairs, and for a moment it’s silence, the three of them caught in an orbit together. If they’re the sun and moon, is she the Earth, or is she just a lonely comet passing them by?

But both of their faces break into wide smiles. “Marina,” says Proteus warmly, the name imbued with as much meaning and love as humanly possible, and she suddenly wishes Proteus had been there with her today, with her father and the council, because he would’ve defended her to the death.

She’s always felt warm with him, comforted like sitting by a hearth under a blanket, and now’s no different. “Proteus,” and she practically launches herself toward him, the two enfolding each other in a tight embrace. It’s been days since she saw him last, but it feels like an eternal gulf. So much has changed.

“What are you doing here?” she demands, drawing away from him.

“Do I need an excuse to visit a friendly ally?” he asks, putting a hand to his chest, fake-wounded.

“Who’s the friendly ally here? Me, or, like, Thrace? Just wondering.” That’s Sinbad, contemptuously, hand on his hip. 

“Why can’t it be both?” Proteus reaches out and puts a hand on each of their shoulders, looking more contented than Marina thinks she’s ever seen him. Marina exchanges an electric glance with Sinbad, who gives her that charming, roguish smile he’s so good at doing. She flashes back the fondest smile she can conjure, and means every iota of it. Seeing him again, that smile, the fire it ignites in the pit of her gut, reminds her why she let an entire expansive future slip out of her hands to go sailing into the unknown, and why she doesn't regret it. 

Not long afterwards they’re seated on the floor together in Sinbad’s cabin. Marina was engaged to Prince Proteus for years, and courted with him for a year before that, but she’s never seen him acting quite this relaxed: sitting there on the wooden floor with legs crossed, laughing louder and acting freer than ever before. For a while he and Sinbad exchange old funny stories: stories Marina has heard a thousand times from Proteus, but she’s never heard Sinbad tell them, and the pirate seems to disagree on so many of the details. It’s hilarious the way these boys play off each other; she laughs until she’s out of breath.

Things turn serious when Sinbad finally asks, “Marina. How’d it go?” A subject they’ve pointedly been avoiding for an hour.

“ _It_ being me severing myself from my nation and my council and my family. Right?” she says flatly, the anger and humiliation of earlier today seeping back into her veins uninvited.

“Uh, yeah. What else?” Sinbad replies jokingly before taking a huge crunching bite out of an apple. (Marina made sure, before they set out from Syracuse, that they had more supplies on board than just pickles and eggs.)

“Well, let’s see. My father and mother basically disowned me. The council stopped just short of calling me a traitorous harlot. I’m out of a job and I’ve screwed my country and I can probably never go back.” She sarcastically ticks off each point on her fingers. “So, how did it go? I’d say not all bad. Because at least they didn’t tie me to a stake and burn me, I guess.”

“Ouch,” Sinbad winces. “They take these things pretty serious, huh.”

“Did you keep your composure?” Proteus asks.

“No,” she admits with a laugh. “No, by the end I’d had enough and I told them all to stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine. Nice going, huh.”

She’s openly fishing for approval at this point, and she gets it. “Hell, yeah,” Sinbad says enthusiastically, at the same time as Proteus exclaims with surprising vehemence, “Good. It’s what they deserve.”

“Proteus?” she says with mild surprise. “You really think so?” Her reserved, diplomatic-to-a-fault fiancé?

“Of course. They should‘ve reacted professionally and compassionately, not like a bunch of children. I wish I’d been there.”

“Honestly, I’m glad you weren’t.” She reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder; he covers it with his own. “I know you would’ve defended me, but that probably wouldn’t have helped. The last thing we need is for Thrace-Syracuse relations to take another hit.”

“Still. I wish I’d been there. You shouldn’t have had to face this alone.” Proteus punctuates this with a knowing glance at Sinbad.

“Hey, c’mon,” Sinbad protests mildly. “If _you_ being there would’ve made it worse, just imagine what _me_ being there would’ve been like. Chaos. Pandemonium. Riots in the streets.”

“He’s right,” says Marina with a bitter grin. “The pirate who stole their ambassador. You know, from what I heard today, half the country is convinced he kidnapped and brainwashed me.”

“Who says I didn’t?” Sinbad gives her another one of those electric half-smiles that she feels all the way down to her bones.

She gives him an identical grin in return. “Who says you didn’t, indeed.”

“The ambassador. Tied up. Thrown in a pirate’s brig. Man, it’s enough to make your granny drop dead from shock.”

“A scandal. Disgusting.”

“The way I must’ve ravished you—”

“It’s the talk of the streets,” she says, restraining her voice from becoming a purr because they shouldn’t be flirting this hard in front of Proteus anyway. “People’s imaginations running _wild_.”

“We should give ’em something to talk about,” he murmurs; they’ve been moving closer together, perhaps a little unconsciously, this whole time.

“Who says we haven’t already?” She wishes she were closer to kissing him, a breath away. But again: Proteus.

 _Proteus_. She pulls away, glancing at him in guilt.

Sinbad, too, seems to have remembered there’s someone else in the room. (Or, who knows—maybe he never really forgot.) “Heh, sorry. I guess we’re a little too... into it.”

Proteus does not look uncomfortable. Proteus looks the opposite of uncomfortable. Something has caught alight in his eyes, and he’s hungrily drinking in the sight of his two friends. He seems to restrain it, with an effort, and appear neutral again. “I don’t blame you two. You’ve been fighting for so long to keep your hands off each other. For, what, a week?”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” says Sinbad breezily.

“It’s been longer than _that_ ,” Marina protests as though her honour is somehow in question.

But Proteus turns serious again. “Sinbad,” he says, something in his tone almost a warning.

“What?” Sinbad turns abruptly defensive.

“Marina. She gave up everything for you today. For _you_. Don’t play around with her. I’m serious.”

“Jealous?” Sinbad says, voice easily and casually mocking, but there’s something else under there, an undertone that speaks of so many things Marina isn’t even close to understanding.

“Extremely,” says Proteus, cracking a half-smile, but Marina feels like he’s not joking.

They stare at each other for a few moments. Marina’s gaze flickers between them. Sun and moon. She wishes—she doesn’t know what she wishes. Her heart is twisting again, but in a different way from before: as though it’s half-empty and longs to be full.

“You don’t need to defend me, Proteus,” she says, breaking the charged silence. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You mean _who_ you’re doing,” Sinbad wisecracks.

“Shut up,” she grumbles, but the awkwardness of the moment is abruptly gone, and she’s laughing and then all three of them are laughing and things are perfect, they’re perfect, they’re perfect. As long as she can manage to ignore everything that isn’t.

* * *

Later Sinbad pointedly leaves the cabin “for some fresh air,” although he throws a glance back at Marina and Proteus before he goes up the stairs. Not jealously—more like he’s trying to paint them into his memory, preserve the way they look just now forever. Marina catches his eye for a moment before he turns, and she can’t read what she sees there. 

They’re left alone.

“Marina,” says Proteus immediately, in a rush, like he’s been waiting to get this out for days.

“Proteus, I—” She scoots forward on the floor so that she’s on her knees right in front of him, so she can look him straight in the eyes and put a gentle hand on his face. Her heart breaks at what she sees there, the steady affection and acceptance, and suddenly she can’t remember why in the name of all the gods she gave this person up.

“I’m sorry,” she says simply, as though this solves everything, when really she’s only saying this pathetic phrase because there’s nothing that can possibly express what she really wants and needs to say.

“You wouldn’t have been happy,” Proteus says with a shrug. “And really, what would be the point of Syracuse with an unhappy princess?”

“Syracuse has an unhappy prince now, I think,” she replies gently and guiltily, running a thumb back and forth over his sharp cheekbone.

He looks at her and she suddenly sees the ocean she’s been longing for all her life, contained in this one person. Not Sinbad’s ocean, wild and unpredictable and all crashing waves, but the calm ocean after the storm, warm water and peace. _The sun and the moon_ , her mind whispers to her again. Maybe she needs both halves to be happy: the thought nags at her and it simply won’t let go.

Maybe she was mistaken when she impulsively decided she wasn’t in love with him. Why? Because there were no butterflies; because what she feels with Proteus is slower, more restful, more assured? Maybe that’s a different kind of love. Maybe—

“I don’t take back what I told you that day,” Proteus says, reaching his own hand up to cup Marina’s face, palm warm against her skin. “Your heart is here. On this ship.”

“It is,” she whispers. She doesn’t dare to elaborate, though, to let him know that a sudden vicious regret is tearing her apart.

“And you’ll find things—wonderful things—out on the ocean. Exotic worlds beyond anything you’ve imagined. New ideas and concepts and cultures and art. With Sinbad you can explore everything. And you’ll have adventures—gods, your travels are going to be spectacular. You’ve got to write to me, Marina. Write every day. I want to hear everything. You two, together—you’re going to see the world.”

Why does she suddenly want to blurt: _Come with us_? Why does she want it more badly than she’s ever wanted anything? She doesn’t say it, though, because Proteus is an hereditary prince, because Proteus has deeper roots in Syracuse than she could ever understand, because Proteus cannot just leave all that behind—it would be a monumentally stupid thing to ask of him, never mind the fact that she’s not even quite sure why she wants to ask it.

“I’ll write,” she says, trying not to sound choked. “Just try and stop me. The letters are going to drown you. You’re going to regret even asking for them. They’re going to fill every room in the palace—”

“I’ll have a special second palace commissioned just to contain them,” Proteus says solemnly, but with a twinkle in his eyes.

“You’ll have to commission two. Just to be safe. I’ll send thirty— _fifty_ letters a day. I’ll write novels. I’ll tell you in excruciating detail about every breath I take. In fact, you should build three palaces. Four.”

“Hmm. Not sure Syracuse has the budget for that.”

“The jewel of the twelve cities? Don’t make me laugh. You people eat gold for breakfast.”

“Then I’ll have to start work right away,” he says. “On the palaces for Marina’s letters. And if anyone tries to stop me I’ll have them thrown in prison faster than they can blink.”

She gives him a knowing smirk. “Uh, that sounds like a violation of human rights law.”

“I’ve never heard of these human rights you speak of. By the way,” he adds as she starts giggling despite herself, “I don’t think you could ever send enough letters to me. Remember when we were courting? You sent at least one a week when you were in Thrace.”

“Yeah, only because my father insisted,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I was afraid of smothering you.”

“You didn’t. In fact, I thought about asking you to send more.”

She blinks. In those days—when they had barely known each other, had just been getting used to the concept of possibly being husband and wife forever—she’d thought her letters were so awkward and stilted and rambling. She hadn’t been quite sure what to say to the prince, so she’d poured out everything she could think of, throwing every subject at the board to see which would stick.

“Really? _More_ letters? That seems...vaguely masochistic.”

He shakes his head, half-smiling. “I was in love with you then,” he admits as if it’s the most casual thing in the world. “Those letters were the highlight of every week. I pored over them—and not just because my father insisted. I loved hearing about your life in Thrace, about you.”

She feels pierced like a butterfly with a pin, and she feels somehow choked too, and she opens her mouth to say something, she’s not even sure what, but then the stairs creak and thump and Sinbad is there again and whatever she was going to say dissipates into thin air.

* * *

Proteus is going to stay with them. She learns this and somehow it feels like being stabbed, it feels like coming home, it feels—like the wrongest sort of right. The prince is going to stay with them for a few days on a whim, under the guise, so King Dymas believes, of a diplomatic trip to Thrace. Sinbad has agreed to sail Proteus back home before they head out on their voyage to nowhere and everywhere.

Proteus is familiar with the crew; she learns this quickly. He knows each of them by name, jokes sarcastically with Kale like old friends, rebuffs Rat’s semi-flirtatious mumbling with a grin and a witty reply. Marina idly wonders whether Proteus sailed with Sinbad and his crew at some point in the past. It would’ve been years ago—long before she knew either of them, back when they were all barely more than kids. Back in those hazy, mysterious times of which she doesn’t have the clearest picture: the late teen years both Sinbad and Proteus skirt around and won’t tell her much about.

It’s twilight, soon, and they go together onto the bow of the _Chimera_ : Sinbad leans against the rigging, Proteus stands behind him and to the side with hands stuffed in his black pants’ pockets, while Marina sits behind them on the floor with knees pulled up to her chest, regarding them both. They’re chuckling as they talk together softly, but she’s not particularly paying attention to what they’re saying, so much as how they _look_ now. That sunset, streaks of painted orange and red fading up into soft pink and then navy blue with pinpricks of stars, turning Sinbad and Proteus into glowing, fire-outlined silhouettes… there’s something unknown, and something all too familiar, stirring inside Marina at the sight of it. She’s come to realize that she’s not ready to let either of them go.

You’d think Sinbad and Marina would be drunk only for each other, after everything, but Sinbad seems equally fixated on both her and Proteus. And she knows she’s doing the same. Someone on the dock distantly starts playing sitar music, accompanied by light drumming and a tambourine, and without warning Sinbad lunges over and pulls Marina to her feet and they’re dancing. And they dance like that for what feels like forever, wildly, tripping over each other, not the least bit sexy, Marina laughing so hard she’s gulping for breath, Proteus standing nearby shaking his head with a rueful smile, and then, again with no warning, Sinbad reaches over for Proteus’s hand despite the prince’s protests.

They’re all three dancing awkwardly together, spinning in a circle, Sinbad’s arm around her waist, Proteus’s arm also around her waist, and there’s room for both of them to fit—like a completed puzzle. They whirl around, feet stamping. Proteus reaches over and his arm is latched around Sinbad’s waist too. They’re pulled together, a tight circle, now moving slower, and the music slows as well, no longer lively but becoming more like a romance, and she’s looking up at both of them with a grin on her lips and they’re looking at each other and at her and nothing has ever hurt more and nothing has ever _burned_ more—

Proteus pulls away abruptly, stepping away backwards, lurching really, leaving Sinbad and Marina standing there alone with arms around each other. Marina wants to reach out to him, feeling tipsy and not entirely herself, but some sober part of her whispers that now is not the time.

“Are you all right, Proteus?” she asks, genuinely concerned.

“Come on, man. It’s just… fun. You remember how to have fun, don’t you?” Sinbad sounds exasperated, as if they’ve been through this before.

Proteus shakes his head, smiling a smile that looks forced. “Too much fun for me. I’m… I’m going to the city for a while.” With that he turns and heads away, leaving them by themselves. Marina feels absurdly incomplete, and she’s deeply frustrated with herself for feeling that way. She chose Sinbad. At great personal cost. There is no time for regrets.

“What’s with him?” she asks Sinbad, more perfunctory than anything.

The pirate shakes his bandana-covered head, arm secure around her. “He’s just jealous,” he smirks, but there’s something raw there, too.

“No, really.” She pulls a little away so she can stare Sinbad straight in the eyes, trying to beam intense guilt into him. “You’re his friend.”

Sinbad scoffs. "Uh-huh. Allegedly."

“Allegedly. What’s that meant to mean?”

Sinbad shrugs and waves his hands around as though it’s hard for him to explain. “It means we’ve always had a…a _thing_. About this. About _you_. You know that.” The pirate growls in frustration, grinding the next words out. “I thought we’d gotten over it by now, though.”

“You can’t act flippant about this. He’s—” She stops herself, unsure of what to say. What _is_ Proteus to them? If not just simply a friend?

“C’mon, Marina.” Sinbad smiles, but there’s no humour or anything pleasant in it, and he’s turned away towards the sea, not really looking at her now. “Let’s get it straight. Proteus is just a hot meal and a nice room to stay in if we ever stop by at Syracuse again. That’s it. So we need to let it go. Both of us.”

“Both of us?” she demands suspiciously, searching his face.

Sinbad shrugs, lips pressed tight, and doesn’t reply.

Pissed, she snaps, “He’s your friend. Your best friend, the one who you gave your life for. The one who would’ve given his life for you. Gods, Sinbad, he’s not just a hot meal, _listen_ to yourself.”

She expects an angry reply or more flippancy, but instead Sinbad looks more conflicted than ever, a war in his eyes. He expels a long breath and rubs the back of his neck. “Ugh. All right, already, I know. It’s just—hard, knowing how to act around him. After. Y’know. Everything.”

She wasn’t expecting vulnerability, and it turns her soft. She steps closer, winding an arm around Sinbad’s neck and pressing her lips to his ear. “I know it’s hard. For me, too. I get it.” 

“The way you were _looking_ at him…”

At these words muttered by Sinbad, she withdraws, staring him in the face. “What?”

His features are cast in shadow. “When I came back into the cabin. The way you guys were looking at each other. _Fuck_ , Marina.”

She isn’t quite certain how to interpret this, but jealousy is the first thing that comes to mind. On the defence, she fires back. “I chose you. You know that? I spent my entire shitty day today giving up everything for you, you _idiot_. I want you. No one else. I’m yours. Now shut up. _Gods_.”

Sinbad grins crookedly and a little sadly. “I love you,” he says, the first time he’s ever said it, but something about it seems diminished and not quite right.

“I love you too,” she says in response nonetheless, and means it. “Idiot,” she adds, disgustedly.

“You shouldn’t have,” he says quietly after she's buried her face against his chest and they’ve been swaying to the quiet music for a few minutes. “Y’know that?”

“Yes,” she says. “But I did anyway.”

“I’m no good. I’m a runaway, I’m a thief, I can’t _give_ you anything. Proteus, he’s—”

“An angel,” she says, deadpan. “I know. I know him. I chose you anyway.”

“You chose the sea, Marina,” Sinbad says, quietly but with desperation. “Any old moron can get you a boat. _Proteus_ could get you a boat.”

“But I didn’t ask Proteus for a boat,” she says firmly, pulling away from his chest and staring at him hard.

“No. I guess you didn’t.”

“When I look at you," she says, "I don't just see the ocean. I see a man who was willing to give up everything for his friend. And sure, you try to hide it, you try to act like the manly man who doesn’t feel anything and doesn’t give a damn about anyone, but inside I see a man who would lay down his life for someone he loves. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re damned hilarious, and you’re the most fun I’ve ever had, and we work together like we’ve known each other our whole lives—we fit, you and me. You feel like you _fit_. And—fuck, I’m in love with you, and that’s why I went to my father’s house today and told him I was giving everything up for an idiot pirate who’s almost got me killed more times than I can count. And who’s saved me even more times than that. I love you,” she finishes emphatically, leaving no room to question the words as anything other than fact, because they are.

She doesn’t add: _but I think I love Proteus, too. I think I love both of you together. I think in an ideal world, I’d get to keep you both._

Sinbad stares down at her, looking faintly shellshocked, a crooked smile growing on his lips. “You know something? I love you, too, Marina. More than anything.”

“Yeah, you’d better,” she manages to playfully quip before he leans down and kisses her quiet. They sway there like that, twin pillars in the fading light, for a long while.

* * *

Proteus doesn’t come back—not until it’s so late that not even avowed night-owl Marina is awake. The rest of the crew is still in the city, probably partying and gambling and engaging in various forms of licentiousness; they’ll be out until morning or later. She and Sinbad, alone on the ship, are lying there together in his bed, both sprawled awkwardly, half-clothed and tangled in cobbled-together sheets that Sinbad no doubt stole from some market somewhere a thousand years ago. A candle burns, hanging from a metal lantern in the ceiling, the only light in the room; it gently sways with the rocking of the waves.

Marina’s mostly drifted off to sleep with the comforting weight of Sinbad’s arm around her, but she crosses the boundary into half-awake when she hears a quiet knock on the door, then the creak of said door opening. She tries to sleepily mumble something, but she’s still too far gone in sleep, can only lie there drifting as soft footsteps pad into the room.

“Sinbad?” comes Proteus’s voice awkwardly, deeply uncomfortable, and then the clearing of his throat, and Marina suddenly feels like it’s best to stay asleep. Or at least pretend that way.

Sinbad, for his part, jerks awake immediately as though he’s been stabbed. “You’re back. Thought you might’ve been abducted for ransom or something,” he says, but sleepily and with a yawn. “Of course, if you had been, we wouldn’t have come to rescue you. It’d be smooth sailing all the way to Fiji.”

“Lies,” says Proteus, still uncomfortable but with a hint of laughter. “You’d jump on the chance for another adventure.”

“Eh, maybe,” Sinbad allows; Marina can hear him shifting, maybe stretching.

“I just need to know where you want me to sleep,” says Proteus. “You haven’t shown me. Am I bunking with the crew?”

“What, you think I’d make the crown prince sleep with those losers in their hammocks? Nah. I was thinking you could sleep with us.” These last few words come out in a rush, as though he wasn’t planning to say them, and Marina’s eyes almost fly open in surprise at hearing them.

“With you,” Proteus repeats slowly, sounding skeptical and dumbfounded.

“I mean. In here. In this room. You can pull up some blankets, make yourself a bed. It’ll be like the old days when we'd hole up in our secret hideout, remember? Just like old times.”

Proteus sounds strained. “I’d rather not. Maybe I’ll go back into the town and find an inn or something.”

“Yeah, see, that’s not happening.” Something's dangerous now, glinting in Sinbad’s voice like a knife. “Because I think we need to air some stuff out. Because I think you need to tell me why you’re so fucking jealous all of a sudden.”

“Sinbad, for the gods’ sakes,” Proteus hisses, “is now really the time—?”

“Yeah.” Rustling and then a soft thump as Sinbad, Marina guesses, gets off the bed and goes over to Proteus. “Now’s the time.”

They’re talking very quietly, but intensely, and Marina can still hear them: she strains for every word, her heart thumping hard.

“Tell me, Proteus. Come on, tell me why.”

“You can’t blame me for feeling strange about this, Sinbad. Hell, a few days ago I was _engaged_ to her.”

“So it’s all about her. Huh?” Sinbad sounds deeply wounded, and angry, underneath the casual nonchalance he’s still trying to convey.

“No,” Proteus explodes, or at least, the most one can explode while trying to speak in a whisper. “It’s not all about her. You damn well know it isn’t. Do you think I want to come in here and see you two together like that, to know that she chose you, and you chose her, and you’re both going to sail off into the sun and leave me behind? Do you think it doesn’t bloody hurt me, every second of every day? To know that everything I had with both of you is gone? And you’re still _playing_ with me, Sinbad—pulling me in and making me dance with the two of you, making me look at the two of you—and her, she’s—”

Proteus sounds so deeply frustrated and hurt that he can’t even force himself to speak any longer, choking on the words like poison. He takes a deep breath and continues after a moment, calmer: “I’m happy for you two, Sinbad. Really, I am. But I’m processing. So please, I’m just asking you not to play with me. Please.”

Sinbad is quiet for a long few seconds, then: “I’m not… playing with you, Proteus.” He sounds so uncommonly tender, such a change from just a minute ago.

Proteus laughs bitterly. “Just tell me where I can sleep on this bloody ship—”

The words are cut off so suddenly that Marina can’t help but open her eyes to see what’s happened. She sees something she hasn’t let herself admit she’s been hoping for, not before this moment: Sinbad’s hands on either side of Proteus’s face, holding him close, thumbs stroking slow circles on his skin, and Sinbad kissing him. Not forceful: hesitant, gentle, so different from the mood of the room just a moment ago. And Proteus doesn’t pull away, far from it; he makes a soft starved noise and one of his hands goes to Sinbad’s neck, pulling him closer, the kiss growing deeper and hungrier.

Marina shuts her eyes again out of some misguided need to respect their privacy, but inside she’s so giddy she can hardly repress a stupid grin. _Finally._ Finally _, you_ _idiots_.

After a deliciously long amount of time, she hears their voices again.

“I wasn’t, I’m _not_ playing. Not with you. I never have been.”

“Then what… I don’t understand.”

“I don’t, either. Maybe we should just take this one step at a time.”

“But—”

“You know what I understand? That I love you. That I’ve been crazy for you and I’ve wanted you for as long as I’ve known you. That at least seems like a pretty simple concept to me.” There’s Sinbad’s trademark sarcasm again, but he sounds raw, too. He’s admitting something he might not have even admitted to himself before now, Marina thinks.

Silence for a few seconds, then: “I thought there was no chance,” Proteus says quietly.

“Oh, there was a chance. There was so very much a chance. You didn’t notice me throwing myself at you, our entire damned childhood?”

“I certainly noticed you throwing yourself at _girls_ —”

Sinbad scoffs. “To make you jealous. Mostly.” Then, softer: “Uh, did it work?”

“It did,” Proteus says, sounding strangled.

Quiet sounds for a few minutes, shuffling, scuffling, soft moaning: she allows her eyes to open a crack and watch them for a few moments, kissing like mad there in the dark, and this time she can’t keep a wide smile from growing on her face; it doesn’t matter, she knows they’re not paying enough attention to notice.

When they speak again, they sound muffled, quieter, as though their mouths are pressed against each other’s skin (and Marina does open her eyes, just a little, to confirm that this is indeed the case).

“And Marina?”

“What about her?”

“Is she another plot to make me jealous?” A note of warning creeps into Proteus’s voice, beyond the starstruck heaviness of kissing. “Don’t hurt her, Sinbad. Don't. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“I know,” Sinbad murmurs. “I know.”

“Then…?”

“I’m in love with her. She’s… she’s like the sun to me. I don’t want to hurt her. I’m serious about that. I want—I want her with me, forever. I want adventures with her. I want a _life_ with her. Gods, why is it so hard to put this shit into _words_ ,” he groans in frustration.

“Then what the hell is this?” There’s no venom or anger in Proteus’s voice, just love and lust and a lot of confusion.

“I don’t know. But I want it to be something.” Sinbad hesitates, lets out a sharp hiss of breath. “All I know is that I don’t want to let either of you go. When I came back to the cabin and I saw you two looking at each other the way you were, I just thought—man, I just thought, I _want_ that. Forever. You two and me. I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to choose. Ugh, fucking hell, why do we have to _choose?_ ”

“Maybe we don’t. Maybe…” Proteus sounds conflicted and goes suddenly quiet.

 _Yes_ , thinks Marina, ferociously. _Yes_.

“Now you’re playing with me,” Sinbad says, like he’s joking but drained of joy. “You know damn well Dymas would never let you go.”

“And I don’t _want_ to go. Syracuse is home, and I want to spend my life protecting it and being its steward. But even a king has to spend some months on the sea.”

“Don’t,” Sinbad exhales tiredly. “Just let us have this, this once. Don’t give me stupid false hope.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life. You want me. That’s a hope I never thought would come true. If she wants me too, still, after everything—I won’t give up the throne for it, but Sinbad, by the gods, I’ll come close. I’ll do whatever I can to be with you two.”

“I really need you,” says Sinbad tightly, “to mean that.”

Proteus says it so quietly that Marina strains to hear. “I mean it.”

They’re quiet again, and then they leave; she can hear their footsteps thumping up the stairs outside, probably—she hopes; she likes to dream—intending to find some room or nook somewhere to fuck each other senseless in. Every part of Marina is aching hard, her heart beating like she’s just run a mile as fast as she can.

She’d barely allowed herself to hope for this, and now here is everything on a silver platter, waiting for her to reach out and grab it. She isn’t going to sit still and let it get away.

* * *

Sinbad and Proteus return the next morning, looking awkward and sleepy and guilty and especially _rumpled_. (Proteus’s hair is down. It’s like seeing a unicorn.) Marina’s sitting on the bow at dawn when they approach on the dock, and neither of them look particularly thrilled to see her there. She stares down at them triumphantly, one leg crossed over the other, grinning like a cat.

“What’s this, boys? You been out all night? Where and with who?” She can’t help screwing with them a little bit to watch them squirm.

“Aw, mind your own business,” Sinbad snarls with an annoyed swipe of his hand as he stomps up the ramp, but she sees his face has reddened and she grins wider.

Proteus, to his credit, stays there on the dock below her and tries to explain. “Er, Marina, I think we need to speak to you about something.”

“You’re damn right you do.” With a few deft movements, she’s hopped down to the dock, where she walks over to Proteus determinatedly, not giving herself a single moment to doubt. Before Proteus can say a word she’s wrapped one arm round his waist and wound the fingers of her other hand through his hair and she’s kissing him like he’s a soldier who just returned to his wife from war.

He’s stiff against her for a few moments, seeming in shock, before responding, arms around her and hands meeting at the small of her back and pulling her as close as she can possibly come; their mouths open in tandem, their tongues tangle together, she bites at his lip gently and is rewarded with a surprised noise of pleasure; she can taste exhaustion and she can taste _Proteus_.

When they withdraw, foreheads still pressed together, she says in wonderment, “How the hell did I ever think I could give you up?”

“I think you’re going to have to explain to me what’s happening,” Proteus says, sounding rather like he’s just been punched.

Marina angles her head to the side and sees Sinbad there on the ship, half leaning over, mouth gaping and eyes wide as though he’s just witnessed a murder. She grins and she beckons to him, and he’s there in three seconds, though he doesn’t seem quite sure what to do once he’s next to them. Marina isn’t sure what to do either—she’s never navigated this before—but she’s sure they can figure it out; she’s sure they can draw a map for themselves. She winds one arm around Proteus’s neck and one around Sinbad’s, and she kisses first one and then the other, and then impatiently says “Well, what are you waiting for?” when the two men look strangely at each other, until they’re kissing too, in each other’s arms and in hers. Before long she’s forgotten she’s on the dock in full view of anyone who might walk by; she’s even forgotten what country she’s in; she’s almost forgotten where she ends and the other two begin.

When they’re finished for the moment, Marina is all but sandwiched between them. A very comfortable spot, if you ask her. “My father is going to kill me,” Proteus says, dryly but breathlessly.

“My father _already_ killed me,” Marina says with a wonderstruck, love-drunk laugh.

“You know what, if I had a dad, I bet he would kill me too,” Sinbad declares, and all three of them burst out into peals of laughter, shot through with a shocked sort of delight.

She can’t imagine how they’re going to work this out. She can’t imagine how bewildered and angry King Dymas is going to be when he hears about this unorthodox arrangement his son has chosen, or what this means for the line of succession; never mind what her own father and the council of Thrace are going to make of this, though such things seem particularly far away and unimportant now. She can’t imagine what this is going to look like in a month, in six months, in a year, in ten years—all she knows is that it’s going to look like _something_ , because she’s found her home, she knows where she fits, like the Earth fits right between the sun and moon, and she’s not about to let either of them go no matter how far apart the sea takes them.

**Author's Note:**

> love wins
> 
> (i don't know anything about mediterranean geography and i know even less about ships, go easy on me)


End file.
